Once again, America faces the prospect of a budget showdown come September. Defense companies are getting ready for the possible disruptions that attend. And, of course, Pentagon budgeteers, led by new Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan, are rebuilding the fiscal 2018 request and preparing for disruption to the last of the 2017 spending. One of… Keep reading →

Ever since the day of its creation, critics have slammed the Office of Director of National Intelligence as an expensive and unnecessary bureaucracy, a threat to the longtime primacy of the Director of Central Intelligence and a toothless tiger. Much of that changed during the joint tenures of DNI Mike McConnell and SecDef Bob Gates… Keep reading →

CAPITOL HILL:  Less than two hours after President Trump tweeted that a government shutdown might be a good thing, the conservative Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee said, no. either elect more Republican Senators in 2018 or change the rules now to 51%. Our country needs a good "shutdown" in September to fix… Keep reading →

The Trump administration’s long awaited “skinny budget”, officially named “America First: A Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again”, has arrived. It confirms the $54 billion increase in defense, and proposes to add $30 billion to this year’s (fiscal 2017) budget. It provides a description of what the Trump administration hopes to achieve in defense… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: It’s time to build up missile defenses against limited attacks from Russia and China, leading experts gingerly suggest in a forthcoming study. While we can’t stop an all-out nuclear barrage, they say, we can and should reduce the temptation for Moscow or Beijing to risk a small strike. Such limited nuclear strikes are an… Keep reading →

ARLINGTON: The Air Force got blasted from Donald Trump’s bully pulpit before the President-Elect was even inaugurated. It looks like 2017 — the youngest service’s 70th year — will be full of presidential turbulence. [We rolled out our crystal balls for our 2017 forecast. Click to read the whole series.] Outgoing Air Force Secretary Deborah… Keep reading →

Congress is setting the defense budget on autopilot and high-tailing it out of town, leaving a lot of unfinished business behind. While President Obama is set to sign the defense policy bill for 2017 into law, this Congress left the funding bills in shambles for the next session to fix. As a stopgap, an extended… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: The odds keep getting better that Donald Trump will ask for a big boost to defense spending in a supplemental request soon after his inauguration. But who gets how much for what? That raises a whole host of unanswered questions, experts and policymakers made clear today at the Center for Strategic & International Studies.… Keep reading →

PENTAGON: Deborah Lee James came to the Pentagon and faced a trial by fire. Within a month of her confirmation, a major scandal involving cheating by nuclear missile troops threatened to further tarnish the Air Force’s image and to raise fundamental questions among America’s allies about our ability to provide the nuclear umbrella they all depend on. The… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: While big-ticket additions to the Navy budget like F-35 fighters and Littoral Combat Ships didn’t survive conference, there are several smaller but strategic plus-ups in the annual defense policy bill that make a major difference for the fleet, Rep. Joe Courtney told me this afternoon. What’s more, with House Armed Services Committee chairman Mac… Keep reading →